Reddit rolling out AI bouncer to halt harrassment
- Reference: 1709832666
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/03/07/reddit_introduces_aipowered_harassment_filter/
- Source link:
The existence of the new Harassment Filter was discovered during an [1]APK teardown by Android Authority, which spotted its existence in version 2024.10.0 of the official Reddit app for Android. That version of the official Android Reddit app has appeared in various unofficial sources online, but the Google Play Store still shows 2024.08.0 as the most recent generally available version.
The app contains lines of code referencing a large language model trained to assist moderators in preventing publication of harassing posts, and is backed up by a Reddit [2]help page updated last week that reflects the existence of the new tool.
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"The Harassment Filter is an optional community safety setting that lets moderators automatically filter posts and comments that are likely to be considered harassing," the help page reads. "The filter is powered by a Large Language Model (LLM) that's trained on moderator actions and content removed by Reddit's internal tools and enforcement teams."
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The filter can be enabled in a Reddit community's mod tools, but individual moderators will need to have permissions to change subreddit settings to enable it.
The harassment filter can be set to low ("filters the least content but with the most accurate results") and high ("filters the most content but may be less accurate"), and also includes an explicit allow list to force the AI to ignore certain keywords, up to 15 of which can be added.
[6]
Once enabled, the filter creates a new tag in the moderation queue called "potential harassment," which moderators can review for accuracy.
Reddit's help page says the feature is now available on desktop and the official Reddit apps, though it's not clear when the feature was added. We asked Reddit for more info, but haven't heard back.
More like (A)IPO
Reddit, which is busily planning its IPO, has been doing everything it can to drum up investor support ahead of its [7]imminent stock market debut. As with all things to do with raising cash in 2024, that means sticking AI anywhere it can.
The popular social media platform [8]signed a deal with a previously unknown AI business last month to let its models slurp up user conversations to train products, earning it $60 million for its efforts. While that figure hasn't been explicitly linked to Google, both Reddit and the Chocolate Factory announced an expanded partnership days after news of the AI deal broke.
[9]Thar be safe harbor: Reddit defeats third attempt to unmask digital pirates
[10]Reddit signs AI training deal with Google – and why OpenAI's Altman could be the winner
[11]Reddit: If you want to slurp our API to train that LLM, you better pay for it, pal
[12]Reddit confirms BlackCat gang pinched some data
[13]According to Reddit , the deal gave Google access to its Data API, and through it "an efficient and structured way to access the vast corpus of existing content on Reddit … including supporting new ways to display Reddit content and providing more efficient ways to train models."
Google, meanwhile, said that Reddit will gain the ability to integrate Google's [14]Vertex AI "to enhance search and other capabilities on the Reddit platform" as part of the deal. For those unfamiliar, Vertex is Google's tool for integrating Gemini capabilities into enterprise environments.
How Reddit users – a notoriously [15]unruly bunch – will react to news that AI is being foisted on moderators isn't clear. Redditors haven't necessarily [16]reacted well to the company's planned IPO, with some referring to the plan as a "pump-and-dump" scheme to enrich Reddit leadership at the expense of the site.
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Reddit has experienced the effect of a blowback before, with [18]thousands of the site's subreddits going dark last year in protest of a plan to begin charging developers to use the site's APIs, effectively killing many third-party Reddit clients.
Reddit knows its users are a risk – it even disclosed its concerns in an SEC [19]filing last month regarding its IPO plans. Ostensibly a tool to assist moderators, the addition of AI could also be seen as a subtle threat – protest again and we'll simply replace you volunteers with Gemini, at least until it gets trained on enough Reddit data to start siding with the protesters. ®
Get our [20]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.androidauthority.com/reddit-ai-model-fight-harassment-apk-teardown-3422993/
[2] https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/23856209638932-Harassment-Filter
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZepHGC57D8kcoFPQQ6K@PAAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZepHGC57D8kcoFPQQ6K@PAAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZepHGC57D8kcoFPQQ6K@PAAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZepHGC57D8kcoFPQQ6K@PAAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-04/reddit-s-meme-stock-forum-users-threaten-to-bet-against-its-ipo
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/reddit_content_ai_deal/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/13/reddit_pirates_win/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/22/reddit_google_license_ipo_altman/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/18/reddit_charging_ai_api/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/20/reddit_confirms_blackcat_extortion_attempt/
[13] https://www.redditinc.com/blog/reddit-and-google-expand-partnership
[14] https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai
[15] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-06/reddit-s-ipo-success-hinges-on-infamously-unruly-user-base
[16] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ayve0f/a_lot_of_redditors_hate_the_reddit_ipo_reddit/
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZepHGC57D8kcoFPQQ6K@PAAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/12/reddit_api_outage/
[19] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1713445/000162828024006294/reddits-1q423.htm#i1b9a579e78a34dfa99f7f26daeec195b_2017
[20] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The whole site is under lock and key anyway. I guess they are rolling out the jobsworth mentality to specific comments.
I suppose they only need a few bots to make the engagement seem organic at this point anyway.
Bots talking to bots, being scraped by bots to build LLMs to generate more AI garbage that can be scraped by other bots...
It's turtles crap all the way down.
This could solve the problem of unruly users. Simply replace the users with AI. And handily boost your engagement numbers ahead of the IPO.
There's already a ludicrous number of AI posts anyway
Reddit upgrade options..........
....... As with all things to do with raising cash in 2024, that means sticking AI anywhere it can.
I have some suggestions as to where............
I left Reddit after AI deleted my two year old Amazon Redshift sub.
I had the sub /r/AmazonRedshift.
I was the primary poster, the sub was two years old, and had about 75 subscribers - organic, real people, mainly I think from r/AWS, gradually accumulated over that time.
One fateful day I made a post, the abstract from the latest Redshift research PDF.
Reddit then began behaving oddly.
After some investigation, and some guesswork, I concluded my account had been silently shadow-banned, and the sub banned (and then shortly after, deleted).
Two years of posts and the sub disappeared, instantly, abruptly, without warning, reason, appeal process or notification, and Reddit was trying to lead me into thinking my account was still active.
Make of that what you will.
(As an aside, El Reg have set up comments here so that if you're on Tor, posting will fail due to Cloudflare, and you'll lose your comment. I'm so used to forms failing I always copy the text before submitting, so nothing lost. It's just not good.)
Re: I left Reddit after AI deleted my two year old Amazon Redshift sub.
I've not had a Reddit account for a number of years now. The last straw was a mod deleting a poetic post I made claiming it breached copyright. As it was my own original work my reaction was feck that, I'm out of here.
I think the aggro redditors have a different plan
cash in and then crater the IPO, then when the price tanks buy the whole thing for pennies on the dollar. After that fire management, and then roll the site code back to before the current ceo wrecked everything, and turn it into a Co-Op.
That probably still won't "save" Reddit though, the flood of toxic users that settled in as other online spaces were enshitified or shut down have displaced a core user base that made the community sustainable. The barnacles will remain, and the community will continue to scatter.
But at least we will have a laugh when some /r/wallstreetbets f*kboy or crypto-bro buys the company out with frikken doge coin.
Reddit to halt harrassment :|
Reddit is the only forum I've come across where the moderators brigand and troll their own subs. There's even a sub dedicated to hunting down wrong-think on other subs. First they infiltrate the sub and post abuse then use such abuse as evidence as to why it should be banned. If that don't work, they ban the moderator and then suspend the sub for lack of moderation. Then there's accounts getting shadow-banned with no warning or explanation. Mainly because some anally retentive mod disagrees with the contents. Months of original work gone down the memory hole. Your average Reddit super mod: Sexually dimorphic with identity issues on a power trip.
Bazinga!
This will end well...
I have a feeling that the subs that could really use it won't enable it, and those that do enable it will find the automod to be either heavy handed or erratic (or both).